The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Shelley

M. Garrett

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137328519
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria europea

This comprehensive guide to the poems, prose, biography, ideas and contexts of Percy Bysshe Shelley features entries on all the major poems and prose works (including inspiration, composition and publication), Shelley's politics, relationships and travels, his representation in novels, drama, film and portraits, and his critical reception.

S

‘Sabbath Walk, A’

Poem in Esdaile, written probably in the winter of 1812–13. The good man, dedicated to love rather than conventional religion, finds a true God in Nature, in the forest. A probable influence is *Southey’s ‘Written on Sunday Morning’ (1795), where the speaker goes not to ‘the House of Prayer’ but to the woodlands, where he sees ‘In lovely Nature ... the God of Love’. But ‘Southey’s mild deism is far removed from Shelley’s militant anti-clericalism’ (EN 179). This is reflected even in the title, which Shelley wrote, CPPBS ii.335–6 points out, ‘sabbath’, not ‘Sabbath’.

‘Sadak the Wanderer. A Fragment’

Poem ascribed to Shelley in The Keepsake for 1828. It concerns the heroic Sadak’s quest, derived from the tale of Sadak and Kalasrade in James Ridley, The Tales of the Genii (1764). CPPBS i.460–5 presents detailed arguments against Shelley’s authorship; the piece may, instead, reflect his influence (463).

Saint Edmond’s Eve see Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire

St Irvyne

Name, probably invented by Shelley, for Hill or Hills Place, a semi-ruined mansion near *Field Place. Its former owner’s name was Lady Irvine. Shelley walked there with Harriet *Grove and it became associated with their love: see ‘February 28th 1806: To St Irvyne’. In St. Irvyne it becomes the name of a French château.

St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: a Romance

Shelley’s second *Gothic novel, written in 1810. It was published by *Stockdale in December 1810 (dated 1811) as the work of ‘a Gentleman of the University of Oxford’ and reissued in 1822.

Wolfstein poisons Cavigni, the bandit chief, in order to rescue Megalena. Thanks to the intervention of the mysterious Ginotti the lovers are able to flee to Genoa. There, Megalena coerces Wolfstein into agreeing to kill Olympia della Anzasca, who has developed a violent passion for him. But he cannot bring himself to do it, and instead Olympia kills herself with his dagger. Disenchanted with Megalena, Wolfstein nevertheless leaves Genoa with her. From here on this story alternates with that of Eloise de St. Irvyne, who feels herself irresistibly drawn to Nempere, a mysterious stranger. Eventually he seduces her. She and a young Irishman, Fitzeustace, fall in love and he is happy to cherish her child by the now-dead Nempere (killed by Fitzeustace’s friend). In the other plot Ginotti tells Wolfstein about his early life and a vision of the devil. He wants to give Wolfstein the secret of eternal life, in doing which he will forego his own claim to it. At the château of St. Irvyne Wolfstein finds Megalena dead. Ginotti asks if he will deny his creator; when he will not, the devil confers ‘eternal life’ – in Hell or living death – on Ginotti. Wolfstein ‘expired; over him had the power of hell no influence’ (Behrendt 252).

The final paragraph brings the two plots together for the first time with its sudden revelation that ‘Ginotti is Nempere. Eloise is the sister of Wolfstein’ (252). These identifications seem inconsistent with the preceding narrative. Stockdale expressed some puzzlement at what happens at the end – see L i.20; it seems to stop short. Possibly at some stage the missing Chapters V and VI – the text as published moves straight from IV to VII – supplied further explanation, but their absence seems more likely to be an oversight, an indication of the passing of time, or conceivably a nod to Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and the fluidity of truth.

Like Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne draws on familiar Gothic conventions in setting and characterization: prisons, Italy, violence and shocking immorality, Ginotti reduced amid thunder to ‘a gigantic skeleton’ (252). Specific debts include Megalena’s name, shared with the ‘diabolical temptress’ in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya (1806); for further borrowings from Zofloya see Peck (1927), vol.2, pp. 310–13. Finch (1999), however, argues for the distinctiveness of Shelley’s treatment of stock elements: ‘Utilizing dual and often conflicting generic conventions, the gothic and the sentimentalist’, he explores ‘the tensions and contradictions in each, carefully extending these crudely stylized and apparently constrained literary modes, and then deploying one against the other so as to test out and challenge the ideological possibilities of both’ (p. 37). For example, the Olympia episode, where Wolfstein is commanded by Megalena and Olympia penetrates herself with the dagger, complicates the phallocentrism of *Lewis and ‘male Gothic’ (pp. 40–4). And when the ‘fallen’ Eloise, echoing the name and situation of the heroine of *Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, is presented sympathetically, ‘Shelley directly confronts dominant novelistic conventions and the moral orthodoxy that informed them’ (p. 48).

The detailed natural descriptions, largely absent in Zastrozzi, are reminiscent of those in the novels of Ann Radcliffe. ‘St. Irvyne unfolds slowly ... in long, convoluted sentences filled with Radcliffean compound modifiers and richly detailed physical environments’ and is ‘an altogether more lyrical novel [than Zastrozzi]’ as is suggested by Shelley’s inclusion of some of his poems (Behrendt 34–5). There are six poems, versions of several of which are used elsewhere. Wolfstein’s lines beginning ‘Twas dead of the night’ appear as ‘Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience’ in V&C; Eloise’s ‘How swiftly through Heaven’s wide expanse’ is a shorter version of a poem to Harriet *Grove (see PS i.87–8 and CPPBS i.273–4) and concludes with a stanza derived from ‘Song’ (‘Come -! sweet is the hour’) in V&C. CPPBS i.264–5 detects in the St. Irvyne poems elements of protective ‘self-parody’.

The British Critic for January 1811 censured ‘descriptions wilder than are to be found in Ratcliffe [sic], and a tale more extravagant than the St. Leon of *Godwin’. The Antijacobin Review for January 1812 took exception to the morality of the work, its impiety, and its ‘description run mad’ with ‘uncouth epithets’ and ‘wild expression’ (RRC 204, 31–2).

Further reading: Seed (1982).

Satire

Shelley’s satirical work includes ‘The Devil’s Walk’, ‘A Satire Upon Satire’, MA and PB3. It is sometimes felt that satire does not come naturally to the meliorist, reforming Shelley. Jones (1994), p. 105, usefully clarifies the point: ‘Shelley clearly prefers the mode of exhortation to that of satire [both feature in Roman satire] ... and his satires, especially after Peter Bell the Third, always employ generic mixtures of negative and positive modes – while privileging, giving the last word to, the positive’.

‘Satire upon Satire, A’

Fragmentary poem composed probably in late 1819 or 1820. The first published version appeared in 1881. If violence and violent satire could ‘make men just’ (10) and reform *Southey (20–35) they would be worth pursuing; since they cannot, it is better to take him aside and politely explain ‘How incorrect his public conduct is’ (48) – ‘Far better than to make innocent ink / With the stagnant truisms of trite Satire stink’ (50–1). Hogle (1988), p. 147, sees the poem as virtually declaring Shelley’s abandonment of satire. For Jones (1994), p. 82, it is a ‘dialectical experiment in opposing impulses towards Southey and what he represents’ as Juvenalian imagery in the first part of the poem gives way to the later emphasis on persuasion.

‘Scene for Tasso’ see Tasso, Torquato

Science

Shelley had, from childhood onwards, pronounced scientific interests. For his early experiments with electricity at *Field Place see Mary Shelley (2002), pp. 222–3, and Hogg i.23. At school he learned about subjects including chemistry, astronomy and electricity from *Lind and *Walker. Hogg i.55 lists some of the equipment he used in *Oxford: ‘an electrical machine, an air-pump, the galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars and receivers’. (Ruston [2005], pp. 74–5, shows that ‘Hogg’s recollections of Shelley’s aspirations for chemistry and electricity betray his own lack of scientific knowledge whilst revealing Shelley’s awareness of current developments’.) In 1811 he seriously considered training as a surgeon, partly under the influence of his cousins John and Charles Grove, who were respectively working and studying at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in *London : see Ruston (2005), pp. 77–83. He remained keenly interested in the debate between the surgeons William *Lawrence and John Abernethy on the principle of life.

In Italy he maintained his interest, reading *Davy for instance, and engaging with *Reveley’s plans for a paddle-steamer. For his meteorological understanding see Ludlam (1972) and ‘OWW’; on astronomy in QM see Grabo (1930), pp. 14–29. Many other poems are informed by scientific imagery and understanding: most obviously volcanoes and electricity in PU. For King-Hele (1984), p. 155, PU IV is ‘lyricized science’.

Scotland

Shelley married Harriet Westbrook *Shelley in Edinburgh on 28 August 1811. The couple, soon joined by *Hogg, lived at 60 George Street until the end of September. In October to December 1813 he lived at 36 Frederick Street with Harriet Shelley, Eliza *Westbrook and *Peacock.

Mary *Shelley had lived in Scotland and her recollections probably influence the descriptions in R&H 20–6 and 1277–8.

Scott, Sir Walter

(1771–1832)

Poet, novelist and editor, one of the most popular authors of the time. Shelley sent Harriet *Grove a copy of The Lady of the Lake (1810) and knew other works by him including the first six Waverley novels (L ii.484). His early opinion of Scott’s poems was that their tone was too ‘aristocratical’ (L i.98).

Shelley sent Scott a copy of *Frankenstein in January 1818. Scott reviewed it favourably in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (March 1818) and believed at first that (P. B.) Shelley was the author.

‘Second Letter to Edward Fergus Graham’ see Graham, Edward Fergus

‘Sensitive-Plant, The’

Poem of spring 1820, published in 1820. Mimosa pudica, the ‘sensitive-plant’, folds its leaves in response to touch or movement.

In Part First the ‘companionless Sensitive-Plant’ trembles ‘with love’s sweet want’ (I.9–12); an annual, it grows in a garden full of perennials. In Part Second a benevolent Lady, ‘An Eve in this Eden’ (II.2), tends and sustains the garden in spring and summer but dies ‘ere the first leaf looked brown’ (II.60). In Part Third ‘The garden ... became cold and foul / Like the corpse of her who had been its soul’ (III.17–18); winter reduces the Sensitive-Plant to ‘a leafless wreck’ (III.115). A brief Conclusion suggests that since everything seems to be illusory, perhaps death too is ‘a mockery’; the garden and the Lady ‘In truth have never passed away – / ’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed – not they’ (Conclusion 16–20). Love, beauty and delight endure, beyond the power of human perception (21–4).

The contrast between the title-plant and its companions is made emphatically in Part First. It is alone, a hermaphrodite, where each of them ‘was interpenetrated / With the light and odour its neighbour shed’ (I.66–7). While the Sensitive-Plant, pudica, folds in on itself, the other plants are grouped together by the repeated agglomerative ‘And’; their interpenetration is complemented by such synaesth...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• A
• B
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• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
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• U
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• Bibliography